The reason why leadership is key to long-term success is because it unlocks the learning necessary for the enterprise to succeed in a continuously changing market environment. The challenge is that in order to encourage and release learning it is essential to understand what leadership is all about and how such an understanding can be fully utilised so as to ensure that your enterprise is a learning enterprise.

The question that management of every business, every organisation, (whether employing two, or two thousand plus people) must ask itself is "Is what we are doing helping to create and maintain a learning environment, or instead, is what we are doing hindering such an environment from becoming a reality?" In other words, are we creating barriers to learning (not a very successful strategy to adopt), or are we helping to create the circumstances in which people want to learn?

It is certainly worth noting that the absence of an understanding and utilisation of learning, just as with leadership, often results in more expensive mistakes going undetected in the formulation of policy and in attempts to achieve worthwhile business and organisational objectives. Unfortunately, the present reality in relation to many businesses and organisations (as indeed with governments) is that after mistaken policies have been implemented they are often persisted with for much longer, and at a heavy price to the enterprise, before being altered or abandoned.

The understanding and application of learning, and particularly shared learning, is an effective way of avoiding such policies. Policies eventually ending in, as already pointed out, costly failure in terms of profitability along with the well-being for all concerned. Whereas, the benefits resulting from the introduction, application and sharing of learning will result in a substantial reduction in costs to the enterprise.

With the absence of learning the intellectual capital of people soon becomes obsolete, resulting in a negative impact on the enterprise and its people. Meanwhile, learning increases our readiness to accept necessary change. As to the question: What is the cost of learning? The answer might very well be: For any enterprise the real costs only occur when learning is absent, or ignored.

In relation to sustainable development learning is not an option but a necessity. It is a basic strategy in improving efficiency. However, in relation to learning, a universal blueprint cannot be devised because the situation in each organisation varies. Nevertheless, we need to utilise learning in order to address the gap between current knowledge and the implementation of that knowlege for the long-term benefit of the business or organisation.

The value of learning is to enable appropriate and speedy reactions to a fast-moving, ever-changing business and organisational environment. However, in relation to learning all too many of us were simply delighted to leave what we thought of as learning behind us as we walked out the school gate for the last time, or waved our degree certificate in the air at our graduation ceremony, thinking that all we know is all there is to know; thus the tendency is for all too many to baulk at learning, failing to see its relevance in the context of our ever-changing lives, and particularly our working lives.

Meanwhile, via the exercise of leadership, we can create a continuing learning challenge that is vital in meeting and mastering various difficulties that every enterprise encounters from time to time. Remember, every human enterprise is vulnerable to failure, to crisis, to things not going according to plan.

There is little doubt that with the introduction of learning, and particularly shared learning, into our business and organisational worlds we can certainly enhance the possibility of sustainable success. In the meantime, while the first steps in creating a learning enterprise are usually the most difficult, the journey itself becomes easier until learning itself evolves into being a natural part of working and organisational life. And you wonder why it was not adopted before.

It could be said that learning is in many ways the wheels, axles and suspension added to the cart that had previously been dragged and pushed over rough ground. It is the ingredient without which business and organisational life is made difficult for all concerned. There is little doubt that the application of learning will engender a major change in thinking as well as major changes in the culture of many business and organisational settings. The adoption of the basic ideas that support the philosophy of learning will, given time, be a positive step forward in our search for ongoing success.

The adoption and implementation of learning encourages people to pay attention to the details that matter and to always be on the lookout for ways to improve, as well as looking for things that can go wrong and then find ways to prevent them from doing so.

The learning ethos challenges us to question the notion that 'the way we have always done things is the best, or only way to get things done.' It also challenges us to directly address problems, attempting to correct them rather than trying to ignore them – remember they won't disappear on their own.

Reflecting on how things are done allows you to make comparisons and see where problems occur - what causes them and what possible solutions there might be. Otherwise, our businesses and organisations are continually prone to the replication of past mistakes (RPMs).